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Custard Powder

Custard powder made from corn flour, arrowroot, almond oil, nutmeg oil, and saffron tincture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Custard Powder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the tincture of saffron with a little of the mixed flours.

  2. Add the essential oils and mix to form a paste.

  3. Dry the paste until fully dried.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Arrowroot + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Almond + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + arrowroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together525 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn flour
Forms the bulk of the powder and thickens the custard when cooked with liquid.
Arrowroot
Adds a smooth, glossy thickening starch that sets custard without a floury taste.
Oil of almond
Provides a strong aromatic flavor that gives the custard its characteristic scent.
Oil of nutmeg
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the finished custard.

The step that matters

Dry the paste until fully dried. Residual moisture in the paste can cause clumping and spoilage during storage, and a dry powder mixes smoothly into hot liquid when making custard.

Swap the saffron

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, flour, arrowroot, almond, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, arrowroot, almond, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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